I am an international student planning to apply to American universities.
Is it okay to have no safeties among my American colleges, if I could take my local universities and universities from adjacent countries (geographically with respect to my country) as safeties? I do not plan to apply for financial aid in American universities.
My profile / stats could be found here: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/1906296-single-major-ec-with-lots-of-scattered-ones-how-to-present-myself.html#latest, and I’ve listed 7 universities in my A-list and 4 universities in my B-list.
A-list:
MIT
CalTech
University of Chicago
Harvard
Princeton
Yale
Stanford
B-list:
CMU
UPenn
Brown
Cornell
What is the chance I’d get into at least one of the schools in the A-list, and what is the chance that I’d get into at least one of the schools in either list (one of the eleven). I’m looking at around 55 and 95, resp.
These are all A-list schools.
If you actually want to go to school in the USA, you will need safeties.
(without bragging)
even with my qualifications in the other thread?
if I have like a 10% chance at each, my total probability is 1-(.9)^11 = 68%
Several of those have acceptance rates below 10% and international acceptance rates far below the regular ones.
Does getting admitted to american universities lie to luck (unless you’re a recruit?)
It’s not luck. These schools just get so many applicants for so few spots that they can be very picky about who they admit. That being said, they’re not always picking the people with the highest stats, these schools are looking for a lot more than that. It’s fine to not have safeties in the US as long as you don’t mind actually attending the universities around you. If you really want to go to school in the US, and that’s the only way you could imagine doing it, then you should apply to a wider variety of schools. There are hundreds of really good schools in the states if you take the time to look around, you just may not have heard of them. What did you get on the SAT/ACT? Also, what’s your intended major?
The chances for each school are not independent of each other. Right, you don’t US safeties if it is OK with you not to come here.
You’re competitive for all of these schools, but being an international still puts you at a disadvantage. All of these schools are reaches for everyone though so just keep that in mind.
If you want to go to the school in the US for sure, you need more matches & safeties (and I did look at your stats). If you are full pay, why is that an issue? Plenty of colleges are happy to have a full pay international student.
@intparent Thanks for your advice on matches and safeties. Based on my stats / ECs (I think my ECs are kinda strong, modesty aside), which schools do you think could be matches / safeties?
I’m sorry but most of the schools you’ve listed have a common acceptance rate of <10% (Stanford and Harvard border 5% even). Even your B-list schools have abysmal acceptance rates. And this is just for domestic applicants. International students have even lower chances.
http://mitadmissions.org/apply/process/stats Take MIT for instance. Out of ~4000 applicants, only about 130 were chosen. That’s around 3%.
If you want to study in America, then I recommend getting more safety schools.
Do I just need to add one or two safeties (which i’m kinda sure to get into) to this list, or do you recommend like 5 schools which I have like half chance of getting in?
I know people who do either strategy.
Also I heard that safeties (which tend to be more lower-ranked) give out generous merit aid. How true is this?
Oh, I also have University of Waterloo under my radar, but it’s not American (not sure if it counts, but admissions are probably similar)
It depends on the safety on the merit aid issue, and some of them don’t give it to internationals. You should evaluate each college website and the Common Data Set (Google it) to see what their policy seems to be on merit aid, and how much they give out. With this list, it is possible you will strike out. You have pretty good stats, and one super award/accomplishment that may get you in, but they will look at the whole package (including recommendations, which you really can’t control). And one hiccup or flaw in the application can ripple and affect you at most or all of the schools on your list. If you were my kid, I’d say add a couple of lower ranked schools if I wanted to be SURE to have options in the US. If you can afford to be full pay, you can afford a couple more application fees.
Your odds are better than most because of the IMO gold medal. This would especially matter at Caltech. But considering most international students’odds would be 1-5% your odds are nowhere near 55%.
Considering your IMO medal, I’d make sense if you applied to Northwestern (special program for top mathematicians) and Harvey Mudd (top for math and science) both of which appreciate IMO winners and are better choices based on our profile then most in B list.
Mudd’s admit rates for males last year was 9.3%. It isn’t much easier to get into than the rest of the OP’s list.
Oh LOL I forgot to add Harvey Mudd in my post (it’s actually part of my college list, idk how it is ommitted
As others have said, you have a great chance at acceptance at least one school given your gold medal in the IMO.
However I sense a bit of arrogance in your posts. All you need is one teacher to write a bad remark about you, and admissions committees will have some hesitation about admitting you. Looks like there are at least 400 other students in the IMO this year who won some type of award, so having a gold medal doesn’t give you an automatic admit.
In the US, its not solely about grades, SAT scores and how many medals you have. Your personality and character counts for more than you think.
How are my posts arrogant - guess I’m really bad at writing then, since I do not intend to be arrogant
